Revealed: Queen's £100m worth of 'lost' art

For the vast majority of people who decide to have a spring clean, the most they tend to find is a handful of coppers down the back of the sofa.

But when the Queen decided to dust off a couple of paintings from The Royal Collection for a new exhibition, curators discovered the existence of two priceless Old Masters.

The Calling Of Saints Peter and Andrew

The lost works - entitled The Calling of Saints Peter and Andrew and Boy Peeling Fruit - have since been examined by experts from Italy and the United States as well as the UK, and pronounced to be the work of the legendary Baroque painter Caravaggio.

Experts said that it was virtually impossible to put a price on them.

There are less than 50 Caravaggios in existence in the world, all of which are held in either national or private collections, and one hasn't come onto the open market in living memory.

Leading auctioneers Sotheby's said the nearest example it could find was a Reuben which was sold in 2002 for a £49.5 million, making the Queen's clear-out worth, potentially, upwards of £100 million.

"The paintings are, quite simply, breath-taking and the significance of their provenance cannot be overstated," curator Lucy Whitaker explained as they went on display for the first time at Buckingham Palace.

Both works, painted between 1592 and 1504, were originally acquired by Charles 1, whose collection of Italian masters rivalled any European court of the period.

For several centuries, however, they lay languishing in a storeroom at Hampton Court after experts dismissed them relatively worthless imitations of Caravaggio's original masterpieces painted after his death in 1610 - although the smaller of the two, Boy Peeling Fruit, was borrowed by the current Prince of Wales for display at Highgrove.

"Six years ago the Queen's conservator began some investigative work on The Calling of the Saints and started to clean it. Under layers of dull varnish and dirt, he discovered something much more interesting than we had ever thought before. It was very, very exciting," Miss Whitaker explained.

"We have since had experts from around the globe examine the work and it has now, formally, been attributed to Caravaggio.

As a result we decided to look at Boy Peeling Fruit again, which has also now been pronounced as an original.

"In order to decide whether the painting is an original or not, these experts look everything from the way it is painted - Caravaggio's brushstrokes are swift and accurate - through to the amount of paint used, which is the sign of a true artist.

There are also several incisions on the canvas which point to it being an original as well.

"Obviously it is exciting to discover the true provenance of any painting but Caravaggio died very young, at the age of just 32, and as a result there are very few original works of his in existence today.

"He is an artist that people feel very deeply about. He was always very controversial, for example painting the saints with dirty feet, but also very humane."

Born in 1571, Michaelangelo Caravaggio was a notorious brawler who fled from Rome after killing a rival in a duel and was found dead on a beach in 1610, having succumbed to a bout of fever on his way home.

He is one of the most highly regarded Italian masters whose biblical scenes, with their mastership of light and darkness, were considered revolutionary.

Both paintings are now part of The Royal Collection, which is held by the Queen on behalf of the nation. Despite their enormous value, she is not allowed to sell them.

They are now on show as part of the 'The Art of Italy in the Royal Collection' exhibition at the Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace, until January 2008.

For further details see the web-site www.royalcollection.org.uk.

Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures, Desmond Shawe-Taylor, said the works made up an "unsurpassable" collection of Renaissance and Baroque art, 175 examples of which are now on display including works by Titan, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Michelangelo.

"We knew we had an unimaginably great drawings collection and knew we had unbelievably wonderful individual paintings - but I don't think anybody quite knew how good it was together," he said.